One day, I got to thinking about that often repeated advice, "Expose for the shadows, develop for the highlights" and I realized I was not sure about how to take a meter reading to represent the shadows. So I started a thread asking for details about how, exactly, negative film shooters do it. <
here>
I thought
@Vaughn gave a pretty good answer in the first reply, and several members agreed. But in the 6 pages of replies that followed, there were enough different practices, defintions, and contradictions, I decided the phrase is almost meaningless.
During the 40 years I was shooting slide film, I was usually more interested in exposing for the highlights and letting the shadows fall where they may, so it is hard for me to unlearn that when shooting b&w negative film.
Because my digital cameras offer instant feedback, and histograms, and a generous amount of potential to manipulate the RAW files, exposure seems almost trivial compared to film.